The paper reports studies on
the motion planning problem for planar star-shaped manipulators. These manipulators
are formed by joining k “legs” to a common point (like the thorax
of an insect) and then fixing the “feet” to the ground. The
result is a planar parallel manipulator with k - 1 independent closed loops.
A topological analysis is used to understand the global structure of the
configuration space so that the planning problem can be solved exactly.
The worst-case complexity of the algorithm is O(k3N3), where N is the maximum
number of links in a leg. Examples illustrating the method are given.

Multimedia Key

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Extension

Type

Description

1

Example
1: A path planning simulation for three legged star-shaped manipulators
having five links in each leg. (6.7 MB) mpg

2

Example
2: A path planning simulation for three legged star-shaped manipulators
having three links in each leg. (4.0 MB) mpg